India - Planning Development

I applied for the West Suffolk Council internship program during my second year of an Architecture degree. With just one year of my degree left and the looming thoughts of future careers I felt it was relevant to apply for this internship. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with myself post university, but I knew as far as the path I was currently on wasn’t one I wanted to continue, and planning flet like a career path that I was open to!

Having lived in West Suffolk all my life I felt that it was the best place to go for planning as I know the area very well and guiltily a bit of an advocate for Bury St Edmunds. So being involved in a very small part future of the area, was such fun for me!

Within the Planning and Development team I shadowed members of my team in their day-to-day jobs. This included a range of site visits from large scale local developments to smaller house holder applications. I was then assigned as a case officer and tasked with a few applications, this included pinning up site notices, attending weekly lists to discuss the applications of the week with other case officers and then finishing up by writing a report.

The rest of my time was spent on our corporate intern project, alongside the other interns. Our project was all about recruitment and how the council could improve their strategies on recruiting. As a cohort we carried out primary research on how the recruitment process could improve and what would be best for the council moving forward. This was a very interesting project as we took time to look over how other councils carried out their recruitment process and how we could better theirs, I certainly learnt a lot about local government this way.

I very much enjoyed my time with West Suffolk Council over the last 12 weeks, and it has certainly made some choices a little easier for post university me! The amount it has taught me about the type of worker and member of the team I have been invaluable at this stage in my working life.